Colleoni, a condottiere from Bergamo who was in the service of Venice, died in 1475 and left all his possessions to the Republic. A clause in his will stipulated that a funeral monument should be erected in St. Mark’s, while his body should be buried in the famous Colleoni Chapel which he had built in Bergamo. Due to a deliberate misunderstanding by the Signoria, the equestrian monument was erected outside the School of St. Mark. The job of forging the statue was given to the Florentine Andrea Verrochio, and, when he suddenly died in 1488, Alessandro Leopardi took over instead of Lorenzo di Credi, who had been the Tuscan master’s first choice.